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Compiz - uses indirect rendering only
Gnome Shell - uses direct rendering only, which is why it was broken when you ran with fglrx
KWin - made it optional and defaulted fglrx to indirect rendering since it was broken otherwise

Compiz - uses indirect rendering only
Gnome Shell - uses direct rendering only, which is why it was broken when you ran with fglrx
KWin - made it optional and defaulted fglrx to indirect rendering since it was broken otherwise

Compiz can use Direct or Indirect rendering, and has had the option for many years. I haven't had to use indirect rendering in a really long time, but i think i still have a laptop kicking around with a radeon card that required the --indirect-rendering flag to be passed when starting compiz (or via compiz-icon option).

Talking about OpenGL, isn't it that in order to use some of the functions of more recent OGL versions, you have to use GLSL? That makes everything a lot more complicated if trying to do something simple, like a 2D game.

Originally Posted by RussianNeuroMancer

Direct rendering fix also included into Catalyst Legacy driver.

And when KDE 4.10 is released, the legacy driver will no longer support the kernel/X server of the day.

Talking about OpenGL, isn't it that in order to use some of the functions of more recent OGL versions, you have to use GLSL? That makes everything a lot more complicated if trying to do something simple, like a 2D game.

True, many of the recent functions aren't available in GL ASM (they are in Nvidia ASM extensions though). But to say that one doing a simple 2d game would prefer GL ASM to GLSL is, well, a bit uncommon